Christmas Holidays!

HELLO! So it’s been forever and a day since I’ve written, so here goes trying to explain the last month of my life!

My exams wrapped up on December 16. After a couple of celebratory nights out with friends, my family arrived on the 18th, after a long and snowy drive down from Paris in a (standard!) rental car. We enjoyed a nice dinner out and saw a bit of Aix, and then the next day we were off to find La Roque, where my dad’s cousin owns a home that we were going to rent. Thanks to our “Tomtom” (nagivation device) we managed to find the house OK, however actually driving up to the front door to unload our stuff proved to be more difficult than actually LOCATING the house! Why? La Roque is one of many little “villages perchés” (literally meaning perched villages, dating back to when people would do their farming down below but, for safety reasons, built their homes higher up) that dates back to a time when people were not trying to drive cars up and down its roads. However, thanks to some pretty skilled driving on Dad’s part (and a lot of worried facial expressions from Mom, frantically asking if she should get out and guide him) we were getting around pretty good by the end. So we arrived at the house – what a shock! It was much bigger than I expected (four stories – not quite the tiny little vacation home I’d been imagining!) and absolutely gorgeous. Parts of the house date back to around 900 years ago, but the majority of it was restored by my Dad’s cousin and it is completely furnished with antique furniture. I even got my own queen sized bed (after sleeping in a twin for the last 4 months, this was my idea of heaven) and there was a patio leading out from my room that had an amazing view. We took it pretty easy while we were at the house, just hanging out and visiting other villages in the area, a couple of which I’d already been to, ie. Isle sur la Sorgue (the town with the amazing outdoor market) and Gordes (another really cool old perched village) – however I was happy to go again and show my family around the places I already knew! We went to plenty of places I’d never been to as well:
- Avignon, a town most known for its bridge (it seems like everyone but me knows the song? “Tout le monde danse, sur le pont d’Avignon…”) and its Palais des Papes, a famous Castle (it’s actually a UNESCO site!) that was home to several popes in the past.
- Fontaine de Vaucluse, a BEAUTIFUL town with a huge spring that feeds the Sorgue river, which is a major river in the Vaucluse region. It was so gorgeous! The water was greeny-blue and the mountains were so pretty. I’m hoping to take a trip back in the spring with friends because there are supposedly some amazing hikes (not hard to believe!)
- Baux de Provence, another perched village with a great view! There were even houses carved into the rocks that the village was “perched” on, if that makes sense! It was really cool. It was also on the way to les Baux that we discovered this neat little cave that offered wine tastings! It was tucked away and we assumed it would be closed since it was December but lo and behold, it was open! It was so random but very cool, I can only imagine how nice it would be to go in there and cool off in the summertime!

Then came Christmas eve, which is when we packed up and drove the 5-6 hours it took to get to Sereno (Italy) which is where our cousins live! It was just amazing to meet all this family I didn’t really know I had! I mean, I knew I HAD family there but I had no idea they were so nice and that there were so many of them! My Grandpa’s first cousin, Amelia, and her husband had 4 children (who are all around my parents’ age) and those 4 children have 9 kids in between them (who are all ROUGHLY around mine and Olivia’s ages) and, to add even MORE people into the mix, the 9 kids have friends/boyfriends/girlfriends who are all basically part of the family and spend tons of time at the apartment(which, by Canadian standards, isn’t very big – but yet manages to hold a ton of people!) so the there was always a crowd. We mainly just relaxed while we were there and ate tons (and tons) of delicious food! I would take 2 helpings of the first thing offered to me thinking that was the whole meal, and would later regret that decision when I realized we were having not just lasagna but also 3 other different kinds of pasta, plus some kind of meat or other finger-type food! I was definitely not hungry while I was there. We also managed to do a bit of sightseeing: we went to Milan, as Sereno is only about a half an hour away, and saw the big Cathedral and the main shopping street (very fancy!). We also went to the “Lago di Lecco”, one of the lakes that marks (roughly) the beginning of the alps! It was gorgeous, especially with all the snow covered mountains in the back round. So after 3 lovely days with our Italian family (and many hilarious karaoke sessions later) we headed back to the house in La Roque. On the way we stopped in Cervo, a town along the coast of Italy (AKA, the Italian Riviera) for some lunch. The town was AMAZING – it had so many cool narrow little streets and allies, all the while with a spectacular view of the ocean in the back round. I was bummed we didn’t get to spend more time in the town because I would have loved to spend more time there – but that’s pretty much how it goes in Europe!

Post Italy, my best friend from home, Jean (who also goes to SFU but is currently doing her exchange in Strasbourg, in the northeast of France) came down to visit for a few days! While she was here we visited Orange, a town that boasts the best-preserved Roman theater in Europe. I had seen the one in Arles which, although impressive, was nowhere near as well preserved as this one, so that was neat to see! So now we’re at New Years Eve. We called around trying to make a dinner reservation but everywhere was either full or wanted 80 euros a head. I tried one last restaurant and as it turned out they had room for us and eating there didn’t mean paying the better part of a thousand Canadian dollars! Much to Olivia’s displeasure, the menu turned out to be mostly seafood (it was a set New Years Eve menu) but the food was good and the service was great (mainly because we were one of two parties in the entire restaurant). The whole thing was actually pretty funny, the very friendly Moroccan chef kept coming out to see if we were enjoying every course, and kept thanking us profusely when we told him we were enjoying it very much. Then it was back to the house to ring in a quiet New Year in La Roque! I was definitely happy to be there with my family and my best friend.

Jean left New Years Day as she had to get back to Strasbourg to finish her exams. We managed to squeeze in one more village in Provence, that of Venasque. Nothing too noteworthy about that one, it was pretty as perusual! Then it was off to Paris. We made a last minute decision to leave a day early and stop in Beaune, just a few hours outside of Paris by car. We had a nice dinner and stayed in a charming hotel, and the next day we went to the “Hospices de Beaune”, which was once a hospital that catered to the poor and needy at a time where that was quite rare. It’s now been transformed into a museum so that was quite interesting! Then we drove a few more hours and finally reached Paris.

The first thing we did in Paris was ditch the rental car (I don’t think I’ve ever been more stressed in the car, and I wasn’t even driving!) because it’s much easier to travel by metro in Paris as driving/parking are a nightmare. Since I was in Paris just over a month ago, I was able to show my family around a little bit. Most of what we saw I’d already seen, but I did get to see the Sacre Coeur in the snow which was lovely! Then on January 7 I had to say goodbye to my family. It was really hard! It was a bit comforting because I was leaving to visit my best friend from high school, Meagan, who is currently studying in Coventry (England) for a couple days before school started. We did encounter a small (or, kind of large) problem though: once at the airport (the airport that takes care of all the low budget flight, situated 80km outside of Paris) I realized I had my Dad’s passport, who was flying out of Charles de Gaulle (another airport actually IN Paris) in just a few hours. I phoned him right away, but he assumed he’d be fine because he had a copy of his passport as well as his Nexus card, plus other pieces of ID. So I flew to Dublin, where I had to change planes. While there I got a call from the Canadian Embassy telling me that my dad had not been able to get on his flight and I needed to FedEx his passport to the Embassy right away. So I bolted to find a European equivalent of FedEx and sent the passport, keeping my fingers crossed it would arrive the next day, which it did, however my Dad only arrived home 2 days after that. So THAT was an unexpected surprise, once I felt very bad about and have already apologized about a million times for.

So after sending the passport, I got on my next flight to London, where I then took a coach to Coventry, about 2 hours away. Meagan met me at the station – it was so weird (in a good way!) to see her! We didn’t do much the first night, just chilled and caught up with each other. The next few nights we went out several times with her “flatmates”, all of whom were lovely and all had AMAZING British accents (Australian accents used to be my favourite but I think I’ve changed my mind after this trip!) One thing British people do while going out is something called “save the Queen”, meaning when someone drops a coin into your drink, you have to chug it to save the Queen from drowning! Well, considering she is our Head of State, I couldn’t very well let her drown, and was thus forced to chug a glass of white wine (something I don’t recommend doing!) Because of a combination of staying up too late and there being problems with the snow, I wasn’t able to do very many day trips, which is what I had originally wanted to do. Coventry isn’t that big, and most of the town was destroyed during WWII (although parts of one Cathedral are still standing, which was really cool) so there wasn’t too much to see there. I also did a day trip to Warwick, although by the time I got there it was getting dark and the things I had wanted to see, ie. the St. Mary’s Cathedral) were closed. But I did have a nice look around the town, it was very quaint and cute! The rest of the time there was just spent hanging out with Meagan and her flatmates, which was actually nice and relaxing. On Tuesday the 12, I had to head back to Aix for school, so a taxi, a train, a metro, another train, a plane, a shuttle and a 20 minute walk later, I was back in my room! Felt crazy to be back after such a long time and I actually felt kind of lonely the first night, seeing as I’d been surrounded by people for the last month! But now that I’ve been to school and seen my friends, I’m completely stoked for what my second semester in France has to offer!

Belated Merry Christmas/Happy New Year to anyone I didn’t get the chance to speak to!